Can The USA Really "Bring Manufacturing Home"?

David Salariya
Apr 30
3 min read

(Spoiler: Not Without a Time Machine.)

Tariffs, Tantrums, and the Trouble with Telling the Truth

Donald Trump is at it again. Again.This time, he’s furious that Amazon might (note: might) have dared to show American shoppers how much his tariffs are adding to their bills.How very dare they! Transparency, after all, is only patriotic when it doesn’t make you look bad.

In a scene that would fit nicely into a political pantomime, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt waved a newspaper article in the air, accused Jeff Bezos of partnering with Chinese propaganda, and generally fanned the flames. Amazon, for its part, calmly pointed out that no such change had been made, would be made, or frankly ever properly discussed outside of an internal meeting. No matter! The performance must go on. The tariffs are good. Very good. Very, very good.

Manufacturing: The Fantasy versus the Facts

Here's the real problem, and it’s bigger than Amazon receipts or who sits next to whom at the White House barbecue or the late Pope's funeral.

You cannot simply snap your fingers and rebuild an entire manufacturing economy.

The dream is simple: Bring the factories home! Put Americans back to work! Make things cheaper and better and somehow still profitable!

The reality is messier:

American workers cost more. (Because they should. Because nobody wants to be paid as if it's 1850.)
The skills needed aren't always available. (You can't make mass-market phone chargers in Detroit if everyone there was trained for aerospace engineering.)
The infrastructure doesn’t exist anymore. (They moved it. Offshore. Piece by piece. Over decades.)

You want your $£9.99 phone charger? You want your $12 picture book? Then you need low-cost manufacturing hubs - and, like it or not, those hubs are in Asia.

The last time the West used lower-cost regions to produce goods for eager consumers, it was post-WWII Europe. Scotland, in particular, became a hotbed of cheap but skilled labour. Levi's, Timex, NCR in Dundee - they all knew you couldn’t rebuild cheaply in the USA during a boom without a workaround. That workaround was people who would work hard for less. Levi, Timex and NCR quickly moved on to the cheaper far east. Timex announced 1,900 redundancies on January 10 1983. History, it seems, has been conveniently forgotten.

Tariffs Are Taxes. Plain and Simple.

Let’s say it loudly for the people at the back (and for Mr Trump, who needs things said twice):

Tariffs are taxes on your own people. Tariffs are taxes on your own people.

Businesses don’t "absorb" tariffs out of the kindness of their hearts. They pass them on - straight into the shopping basket. Straight onto the Amazon checkout. Straight onto the shelves of Walmart, Target, and Home Depot.

When Amazon dared to (maybe) show customers the true cost of tariffs, the White House reacted like someone had set fire to their comb-over.

The Bottom Line: Manufacturing Nostalgia Won't Pay the Bills

In theory, America could "on-shore" some critical industries - semiconductors, vaccines, defence gear. And it probably should.But will we see factories churning out low-cost toys, budget books, or cut-price fashion made by happy workers in Ohio anytime soon? No. No, no, no.

Unless consumers suddenly want to pay triple, wait twice as long, and endure half the choice, global supply chains are here to stay - tangled, turbulent, and economically necessary.

In the meantime, blaming Amazon, China, or "hostile acts" for the consequences of your own policies might work for a rally speech.It doesn't work for a checkout screen.

Make America Great Again at Manufacturing?

An AI-generated video satirising the idea of Americans taking on factory jobs has garnered over 6 million views following President Trump’s tariff policies. NY Post writer Brian Faas reports on this development. The video, which aims to critique the Trump administration’s pledge to boost US manufacturing jobs through tariffs, shows disheartened, larger-bodied “Americans” working in sweatshop-like conditions to the sound of traditional Chinese music. The depicted US workers appear obese, middle-aged, and lacking intelligence as they sit at sewing machines. This video was shared by TikTok user Ben Lau with the caption “Make America Great Again.”